Peter Gabriel 3 - Melt

Storm Thorgerson, from Hipgnosis, introduced Peter to the work that Les Krims was doing with Polaroids. They began experimenting with hundreds of Polaroids, having fun squashing and squeezing and smearing the developing images, a technique later known as Krimsography. The unsettling yet startling results were then re-photographed with black and white film.

“The cover for the vinyl album was in black and white. This is the colour Polaroid from which it was taken, without further adornment. In later years we came to prefer it” Storm Thorgerson.

“There was a photographer called Les Krims, who discovered that if you take a Polaroid and you squash it you can get the colours to run, and we used to go after them with different objects and sort of burnt matches and coins and fingers and all sorts of things and it was a lot of fun ‘cause you had to get the timing right but you got some wonderful effects out of the distortions” Peter Gabriel.